


After it Blinks: A Series of Scenes

by LiquidMirrors



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Horror, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Monsters, Other, Psychological Horror, Spoilers, specifically for episode 160 of mag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-26 00:57:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21365530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiquidMirrors/pseuds/LiquidMirrors
Summary: Jonathan Sims has failed. He has inadvertently brought the world to its knees, turning it into a kaleidoscopic nightmare that crawls and cleaves and kills. We know his sorrow, we know his guilt, and we know that the Sky now Looks Back.We know this all to be true.Except......what happened to everything else?What happened to innocent bystanders in places we have not seen? What happened in the moments that the world Changed? What happened after and what happened to all of us?After it Blinks is an on-the-surface dive of what happened after Jonathan Sims ended the world, with short anthology-styled stories taking place in the world after the Eye opened.Now, sit down, relax, put away the tape recorder, and let the show begin.
Relationships: None
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please return your carts to the front.

Becca Ainstrey walked across the parking lot of the superstore, dressed in multiple layers and topped with a neon vest. She was in the midst of a short but late-night shift at the market, collecting shopping carts and steering them to their designated drop-off zones. It is a monotonous job, and whenever she is assigned to it, she can practically feel her brain boiling to death inside her skull.

The night was quiet yet cold, chilly fall breezes occasionally sweeping their ways across the nearly-empty lot. Even underneath her hat and coats, Becca could feel the tips of her ears going numb. Her scarf felt just as useless too, as it covered her mouth and face, feeling like a damp useless nuisance that only made her more hasty to complete her shift.

Not a lot was on her mind, only transparent reminders and on-the-surface contemplations. She thought about when the night would end, and resisting to look at her watch in anticipation. She thought about an essay that was due in four days. She thought about her class schedule for the upcoming school semester.

She grabbed another shopping cart, taking a moment to look at the sky. It was black as pitch, uniform in all directions. The phosphorus streetlamps did nothing to dispel the matte reality that was the night surrounding the store. The moon hung above the horizon, above the treeline, glowing as it always had.

Becca sighed as she turned around and began to wheel the cart back towards the store.

When the hairs on the back of her neck prickled up, she assumed it was because of the cold.

She was a few meters away from the automatic doors when a car alarm in the lot went off. It sliced through the silence, causing Becca to jump slightly. When she recovered, she brushed it off as faulty wiring.

Then she heard something hit the asphalt with a muffled thud. And then she heard a scream.

Instinctively, she turned towards the panicked customer. It was a woman, middle aged with glasses and wispy blond hair. She had dropped a plastic jar of mayonnaise on the ground. Her hands were shaking, her whole body was shaking as she pointed up into the sky. She opened her mouth and screamed again.

Becca’s gaze followed the woman’s outstretched hand, and she froze.

Another scream sounded off on the other side of the lot. And then another. And another.

More car alarms began sporadically going off - in the lot, on the street, all over the county.

The wind began to pick up again, howling in a way that resembled a chorus of laughter.

In the sky, the moon was flickering, shuddering and blinking out, a candle flame in a jack-o'-lantern. While this in and of itself could be seen as upsetting, this was not what was causing the hysteria.

In the inky darkness of the sky, something shifted. It was humongous, dwarfing the failing moon in the sky, reducing it to another one of the stars. It was hard to make out, as it was a contrast that somehow seamlessly blended into the night surrounding it. Black on black. Dark on _darker_. As Becca stared, the sky-mass shifted and flexed like the strands of a muscle, bulging out towards the earth. It almost seemed to glisten from the little lights of the little people and houses and lives below.

It compressed.

And then it peeled back…

...revealing a humongous, godly eye.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Follow the signs.

Rowina Blake was afraid of two things: crabs and lightning. She did not know why she feared these things, although she assumed that she hated crabs because of their small legs, or was it the way they scuttled? She obviously knew why she was afraid of lightning - it was how the light spasmed across the sky like a blight, an open wound in the air above everything.

Rowina Blake was contemplating these such things as she drove home from her shift at the office. She had been reviewing cases at her firm, and was thus one of the last ones to vacate the premises. This was not the standard, although it did occur often enough that Rowina had become accustomed to driving home in the dark. At such an hour, the roads were usually quiet, leaving her and her vehicle alone on the asphalt paths. Rowina enjoyed these moments of isolation, drinking in the quiet world as her dented yellow Volkswagen slowly ambled past trees, fences, and farmers' fields in order to reach her complex.

Though, this time, something red seemed to flash lazily in the distance.

Rowina leaned forward and squinted, wondering if her eyes were going funny. Was that even possible at 29?

She didn't have to question further, because the red flashed again.

The closer she got, the more apparent it became. It was a stop sign, placed on the right side of the road before a 4-way intersection in the road.

Rowina had passed this intersection almost daily, and was relieved that the county finally had taken measures into their own hands. After all, that very cross had been the site of many accidents in the previous decades, and locals had been pushing for change for years.

Although, if the city did make changes, why would they only add one sign to one part of the intersection?

Rowina quickly shook her head as she pulled up to the cross in the road, momentarily pausing to glance at the other paths. When she looked up and got a closer look at the sign, she realized it wasn't a stop sign, not really.

Instead of "STOP," it said "GO."

Did it even say "STOP" when she first saw it? A thought popped into Rowina's head, a thought that replayed her watching the sign change from STOP to GO in the moment she blinked, or that it flickered between both states as her car got closer and closer to it.

Whatever. It did not matter. Rowina wanted to get home, and she didn't want to deal with whatever the hell was up with that sign.

When her foot pressed on the gas pedal, something shifted.

It felt like her whole body was stretching like taffy - there was no pain, but a pressure that seemed to expand as she seemed to distance herself from… herself. It kept increasing and growing at an almost exponential rate. The stress in her arms and neck and chest as every nerve fired off in panic mode. She was being pulled like a piece of rubber.

And then she snapped.

And then Rowina Blake passed the intersection, heading home to her apartment. Although she felt relieved, she couldn't help the feeling that, deep down, she had left something behind at that sign.

Rowina Blake saw a glint of red in the distance. Hoping it was some trick of the light, she kept going.

When she saw it was another stop sign, she floored the gas pedal. She didn't care whether it said "STOP" or "GO" - she was getting the hell out of there.

She was going too fast to brake in time for the car in front of her, the car parked at a stop next to the sign. She was going too fast to register the car's licence plate, or even the driver. 

What she was able to register moments before impact was that the car was a dented yellow Volkswagen.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No talking, please.

Jacob Krane saw a girl get dragged under a desk.

He was in his university's study hall when he heard it. Of course, a scream in such a silent place is bound to startle and shock, causing everyone inside to practically leap off their seats or fall off their chairs. Jacob (along with the rest of the occupiers), was not ready for what he was about to see.

There was a girl on the other side of the room, sitting at a desk placed up against the far wall. From underneath the desk where the hollow should have been, there was only what could have been described as a darkness that stretched on farther than it should. From this dark, a pair of gangly arms were reaching out and grasping the girl by the ankles and shins. Their flesh looked slick and oily, and stank of smoke and tar, and the places that they grasped the student left stains that could've been mistaken for tattoo ink.

The girl was still sitting on her chair as she tried shoving herself away from the hands, kicking and yelling for help. When the arms pulled her legs sharply, she fell off the chair and was forced to lie prone on her back. She quickly flipped around and began to crawl away, the arms and hands still gripping at her legs.

As everyone held their breath, more arms began to unfurl from the dark place under the desk, reaching out and carefully grasping her shoulders and hands and stomach. Their movements were calm, calculated, as if they knew that she wouldn't be able to get away. The final oily hand gently clasped itself over her mouth, taking its sweet time to cruelly silence her muffled screams. Her eyes skittered around the room, frantic, desperate, and wet with tears.

A moment after the arms cocooned her, they dragged her back into the crawlspace, and the shadows abated, revealing the same solid wall that was there before. A heartbeat passed. Then two. Nobody made a sound.

Jacob Krane felt the carpet underneath his feet sway. It buckled and began to feel soft and thick, the same texture of mud on a forest floor. He looked down.

He was up to his thighs in the carpet, and he kept sinking fast.

He was going to be swallowed.

He was the next to start screaming.


End file.
